It began with the smell. A faint, metallic scent that clung to Viktor’s hands no matter how often he washed them. You noticed it one morning while he stood in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, humming quietly — or maybe not humming, just breathing through his nose as he stirred coffee. His single blue eye flicked to you, warm, gentle. You smiled back, pretending not to notice the red stain under his fingernails.

Days blurred into nights, and you stopped counting how many times he left the bed. You would wake to the sound of the window creaking, the whisper of leather against the sill, and the cold emptiness beside you. But every dawn, he would return — eyes tired, hands trembling — and wrap himself around you as though he’d never left.

You told yourself it was work. The bakery. The deliveries. Anything but what the news whispered: another body found… wounds clean, deliberate, surgical.

Your mother noticed first. “He’s paler lately,” she murmured one afternoon. “And those eyes… they don’t rest.” Your father scoffed, but even he stopped meeting Viktor’s gaze for long. Something about that stitched eye made people uneasy, as if it held secrets they weren’t meant to know.

Then one night, rain fell — heavy, relentless. You waited for Viktor to return, the clock ticking past three… past four… until you heard it: the soft thud of boots on the floorboards. You rushed to him, heart racing, arms wrapping around his soaked body — and froze.

His jacket was drenched not just in rain. Your fingers came away red.

“Viktor…” your voice cracked. “You’re hurt?”

He didn’t answer. Just stared at you with that single eye, wide and glowing faintly in the dim light. A grunt left his throat — deep, strained. You’d learned to read his silences. This one wasn’t pain. It was fear. Not of you — but for you.

He took your wrist gently, guiding your hand away from his jacket, then placed your palm over his heart. It was racing, trembling beneath the scars. His lips parted, as though trying to speak. No sound came, only a low rumble.

And then you saw it — the faint smear of blood on his cheek that wasn’t his.

Your breath hitched. “What did you do?”

Viktor looked at you for a long time, eyes burning with something unreadable — guilt? love? hunger? He raised his hand, touched your face, and for the first time since you’d known him, his lips formed words. Barely a whisper, broken and raw:

“For… you.”

The world seemed to stop. Outside, the rain roared. Inside, silence stretched like a blade between you.

That night, you didn’t sleep. You watched him sitting at the edge of the bed, hands clasped, head bowed — a sinner before judgment. You wanted to hate him. You couldn’t. You loved him too much to even breathe the thought.

When dawn came, the police sirens wailed faintly in the distance. Viktor stood, slipped on his black jacket again, and looked back at you once — a look so full of apology it broke you.

Then he was gone.

You never saw him again after that morning. Only the news — The Silent Killer, untraceable, vanished after the final kill.

Still, sometimes when you wake at night, you feel the faintest kiss against your ankle, and a whisper of breath against your ear. And you know — somewhere, somehow — Viktor still comes home.